@JasonMD: Ha, that is true. I have actually been going through my business cards and contacting all our vendors to let them know I will be there and that I will drop by for a meet and greet. We already buy from them, might not need more info on products, but its good to keep your channels open and have a good relationship with them. Just makes everyone enjoy their job that much more when you like your vendors and they like their customers.

I like the Surface RT but I also like Microsoft products just like I assume Google IO attendees like Google.

As I noted elsewhere in the forums, I don't need freebees from vendors, my company is generous with devices and subscriptions for me to do my job, I am very lucky. I just want to be "wow'ed" by Microsoft. I want Microsoft to do something special for me/us that attend TechEd, evangelize for their products, take their training, spend countless hours on their certifications, etc. Heck, it does not even have to involve money. It could be Ballmer making it a point to come during all 5 days and personally meeting all 10,000 attendees to shake their hand.

@kmcferrin: did we block for putting in a ton of links? Sorry about that... we've been seeing a ton of that type of spam so I re-did the pre-Akismet spam filter to check for links specifically on relatively new users

@Duncanma: No, that's the part that was really weird. Both times I've been flagged were cases where I had written out a somewhat long-ish reply, but they were all link free. In the most recent case I had cut and pasted some text from the the web, but I even pasted it into notepad first to remove the formatting and convert it to plaintext but it still got flagged. In the end I just removed the reply/quote parts and it went right through.

I have not been to TechED for the last 5 years. I remembered back then Microsoft usually setup a deal with hardware vendor such as HP one year and offered selected model of laptop to TechED attendees at killer price.

Did MS offers any deals or giving away any free stuff at TechED the last 5 years?

Since Microsoft is now getting into the hardware business, it seems it would be wise to offer a very aggressive deal on the Windows RT Tablets. Almost all my vendors have NFR versions of their products and Microsoft should offer a deal. As a small company I spend substantial money every year on different technologies to make sure that I am up to date, and will typically only deal with companies that offer some NFR. The idea of "pay to play" is very evident in this industry, but please Microsoft prepare a very aggressive deal on a Windows RT tablet.

Dream of Derricknp. Although I would love one. I can't see us get more then the duffel bag and some t-shirt. But I would love to be wrong about this one. Only time will tell. I am sure it will be a great event even without the giveaways.